Introduction: That most remarkable of outside men – Harold Brookfield's intellectual legacy

Abstract: Harold Brookfield's academic career spans more than half a century, traversing small tropical and subtropical islands and mountainous uplands, focusing on people–environment relations and linking to a diversity of institutions and disciplines. His unwavering commitment to fieldwork at the local level and to comparative study is paralleled by a healthy scepticism with respect to academic trends and orthodoxy of any kind, whether intellectual or physical. It is the farmers of the developing world who are the source of much of his inspiration. His theoretical contributions are based essentially on his observations of their practices and his learning from their experiences. His academic insights into the processes of change in rural areas of Melanesia, East and South‐East Asia, Africa and South America, where small‐scale ecological studies are linked to global forces, are of lasting significance.